With Blue Frog, the reputation of Mumbai’s big-shot chef and restaurateur Rahul Akerkar has gone global, writes Paul Ibrahim
Last December, on Blue Frog’s first weekend in operation, the hippest music club Mumbai has ever seen found itself mired in controversy. As Rahul Akerkar (right), celebrity chef and one of the venture’s eight co-owners, watched embarrassed from his open kitchen, Cape Verdean singer Sara Tavares quit the stage, telling the audience that she’d return only if they stopped talking.
The loud conversations continued.
Two of Akerkar’s co-partners grabbed the mike to implore their patrons to quieten down and listen. Finding their pleas unanswered, one reportedly said that they were “ashamed of Bombay” for not showing the performer the respect she deserved. Patrons who couldn’t keep their voices down were ordered to leave.
Mumbai’s beautiful people were outraged. Irate messages were posted on the club’s Facebook page and the Mumbai Mirror, a morning tabloid, ran a story headlined, “Lesson in etiquette puts off patrons at new hotspot.” The paper suggested that the owners had stepped out of line. It concluded that patrons “may return to the restaurant, but only if they are welcomed as fun-loving, hearty Mumbaikars.”
Five months later, Akerkar looks back on the incident with wry amusement. “Controversy is great for business,” he chuckles. “It definitely keeps things alive and dynamic.” In hindsight, he’s willing to be more understanding of the chatterboxes: “This kind of performance space is new in India.” Astonishing but true – Blue Frog is the first club in the country to put on regular performances by cutting-edge local and international acts. Among the international musicians it has featured in its short lifespan are American banjo player Béla Fleck, the saxophonist Bob Belden, singer Susheela Raman and Norwegian jazzer Bugge Wesseltoft. The problem, Akerkar says, is that Indians seem to believe that only classical music deserves complete attention, “but in a live venue with a restaurant and a bar, you can yell and scream if you choose to.” His conclusion: “It’ll take time for people to learn to pay attention to the music.”
Educating Mumbai’s newly emerging affluent class about experiences that are commonplace in other parts of the world is something that Akerkar has been doing since 1989. In that year he set up Under The Over, an international bistro tucked away in the shadow of the busy Kemp’s Corner flyover. The menu included such novelties as jerk chicken and humous, neither of which had ever been seen on menus outside five-star hotels.
Akerkar first began to cook when, as a student in a small town in Pennsylvania, he got homesick for Indian food. Though he later enrolled at Columbia University in New York to study biochemical engineering, he spent much of the 1980s working in the kitchens of that city’s most famous restaurants and expanding his repertoire. With Under The Over, he had little patience for the hype that is often intrinsic to the restaurant business – the aim was simply to serve up “good food with good ingredients, cooked well.”
Under The Over (which closed in 2005) was followed, 10 years ago, by Indigo, serving up what Akerkar describes as “Euro-Asian cuisine.” In addition to its now-famed lobster bisque, Indigo’s debut menu had as its signature dish rawas, a tasty local fish, in a curry of raw mango. Western food, according to Akerkar, but with “an Indian expression”. How could it could be any other way, he asks: “The ingredients are Indian, the cooks are Indian – even my taste buds are Indian.” A year after opening, Indigo was acclaimed by Condé Nast Traveller as one of the “world’s hottest 60 tables,” and the eatery has won awards with regularity ever since. Last year, it featured at the World’s 50 Best Restaurants Awards, in London.
In 2005, Indigo spawned a sister establishment, Indigo Deli, serving up sandwiches, pastas and the best hamburger in Mumbai. Akerkar says that he launched the Deli because he wanted “to have fun with food.” He explains: “Indigo is intensive. Every dish has a main piece and then there are two or three sides. It’s a difficult kitchen to work in.” But Indigo Deli, he says, gives him the opportunity to do things simply.
Blue Frog is something altogether different again. The 557-sqm club – which is enormous by the standards of space-starved Mumbai – is set in the rapidly changing industrial neighbour-hood of Lower Parel. Next door is a yarn factory that often works late, so patrons walking through the yard can look in and observe whirling spindles and humming rotors. Akerkar says of his new venture that it has “a 1920s, yet ultra-modern supper club feel to it.” It’s a venue in which the food (which is “hearty and robust and fun to eat,” according to Akerkar, and centres on a charcoal grill) takes second billing. The Frog has three distinct areas: there’s a pit in front of the stage for people who want to get close to the music; a back-of-the-room area occupied by a long bar; while the middle section has seating “pods” – circular dining spaces divided by honeycomb-like partitions. Like seating in a Roman amphitheatre, the pods circle and rise from the stage area. When the lights go down, the variously coloured top surfaces of the pods glow in the dark. It’s a striking bit of design that has gained the club plenty of international media coverage – US hip-hop artist Kanye West even has a link to the Frog on his personal blog.
The Blue Frog complex will soon include state-of-the-art recording studios and the partners plan to start a record label to promote edgier local artists. Each of the eight partners plays a distinct role. “Everyone’s got something to do, and no one interferes with what the other is doing,” says Akerkar.
Now that the club is up and running, Akerkar is pressing ahead with his next project: a restaurant, bar and banquet facility on the verdant expanse of Mumbai’s Mahalaxmi racecourse. His efforts to educate the city about the finer things in life are paying off. “Today, diners have a greater vocabulary,” Akerkar says. “They can say you have too much thyme in this, or the texture of that is wrong. They’re armed with knowledge and expectations.” Luckily, that’s the kind of thing that isn’t likely to get the tabloids into a lather.
AKERKAR’S KITCHENS
Blue Frog
D/2 Mathuradas Mills Compound, NM Joshi Marg, Mumbai (+91 22 4033 2300, www.bluefrog.co.in)
Indigo
4 Mandlik Road, off Colaba Causeway, Colaba, Mumbai (+91 22 6636 8999)
Indigo Deli
Pheroze Building, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Marg, Apollo Bunder, Colaba, Mumbai (+91 22 6655 1010)
|
 |
